This invention relates in general to a method for processing accounts corresponding to different products that are members of a group, and more particularly to a method for processing a group of accounts that supports group level processing at the group level while retaining independent processing of the accounts at the account level.
Many individuals hold more than one credit card. Additionally, an individual may hold the liable relationship for more than one credit card held by another individual or individuals. There are several types of credit card products available. Some cards are private label cards that can only be used in a particular store or business, such as a department store card or a specialty chain store card. Other cards are general use cards that can be used in a variety of stores or businesses, such as a VISA™, MASTERCARD™, AMERICAN EXPRESS™, DINER'S CLUB™ or DISCOVER™ card.
Cards held by an individual often include a variety of these different products and versions of these products. Different versions of a product are offered to address different market interests and needs. For example, a VISA™ card could be a classic card, a gold card, or a co-branded card. Issuers often encourage their existing cardholders to carry more than one of their products to increase the share of that consumer's activity for their products.
A consumer can be encouraged to hold multiple products and/or cards for any of a number of reasons. The number and type of cards held by an individual are influenced by many factors, including interest rate, reward program and merchant acceptance. The activity on the various accounts held by an individual may vary due to the type of expenditure or the person making the purchase.
Different cards can be used by a single consumer to manage different types of expenditures. For example, one card can be used for everyday household expenditures, such as groceries and gasoline, another card can be used for major household expenditures, such as major appliances or furniture, and yet another card can be used for vacation expenditures.
Many credit card products offer a reward program to provide an incentive for a cardholder to use the card associated with the program. An individual often carries different cards to participate in a variety of different reward programs. A typical reward program awards points based upon the amount and/or type of purchases made with the card. Depending on the purchase, an individual may select the card with the greatest reward opportunity associated with that particular purchase.
In addition to carrying multiple cards as an individual, an individual can share ownership of credit products carried by other members of their family. For example, in a family including a mother, a father, a daughter and a son, each parent can hold a number of cards. In addition to the parents, the children can also hold cards. Some of the cards can be held individually and some can be held jointly. To help manage the family finances, it would be beneficial if information about all of the cards held by members of the family could be collected in a single statement.
If the members of a family hold distinct accounts, the reward points earned by the family members are generally divided among different reward programs and/or different accounts. An issuer may find a marketing advantage if the accounts could be pooled together, making it easier for the members of the family to reach a point goal. Thus, there is a need for pooling reward points earned by different individuals using different accounts.
Depending upon the age and status of the children, the mother and/or the father is liable for any charges incurred by the son or daughter. Typically, if a parent wants to provide a child with a credit card, the parent has three options: 1) provide the child with an additional card on an existing account, 2) provide the child with a card on an account where the child is the primary user and the parent is the responsible party, or 3) provide the child with a secured card by providing collateral for the account.
Each of the current options has disadvantages. A disadvantage of providing the child with an additional card on an existing account is that the child has access to the entire credit line of the account. A disadvantage of providing the child with a card on an account where the child is the primary user and the parent is the responsible party is that the parent's access to credit may be reduced. If the parent also has another account, then the credit line given to the child is not available to the parent even if the child is not currently using it because the accounts are unrelated. A disadvantage of providing the child with a secured card by providing collateral for the account is that the collateral is committed to secure the account regardless of the amount of activity on the account. A secured account also may not include a process to report activity to the parent providing the collateral. Thus, there is a need for additional options for an individual to provide a child with a credit card. In particular, there is a need for limiting a child's access to a shared credit line and for considering multiple accounts when calculating an individual's available credit.
As a result of these market realities, issuers are faced with a challenge to manage an individual's whole relationship with them while offering the flexibility consumers desire in their product options. Issuers want a complete answer to manage an individual as a relationship and to maintain control and marketing data at the lowest possible level. The lowest level being a single person using a single product version. Currently, several solutions exist which answer varying components of the problem. Additional names, commercial card functions, data stores, plastic/account separation, and other off line processing all provide only partial solutions.
Some credit card issuers facilitate group processing by maintaining additional names on an account. This basic functionality identifies multiple cardholders as authorized users on the same financial record. In addition to the issues of shared credit lines discussed above, this functionality requires that all cardholders share the same credit product and product version. This option also provides almost no functionality at the cardholder level. All activity is maintained and managed at the account level which merges the individual cardholders together. This limits the issuer's ability to complete marketing analysis on individual group members.
As an extension of the additional names functionality, some processing systems allow the cards which correspond to the additional names to have distinct card numbers. Financial calculations on these accounts are still done at the account level, but the individual transaction activity can be tracked back to a particular cardholder. This functionality does not solve the shared credit issues or the ability to make other processing decisions at the card level.
Some credit card issuers provide commercial card accounts. A commercial card account is a single financial account that is associated with multiple cards. All of the, cards are the same type and version of a product, e.g. a standard VISA™ card. Each of the cards can have a different card number. The different card numbers can be used to list the transactions by cardholder on the statement. A single group statement is sent to the financially responsible party, usually the company.
In most applications of commercial card functionality, the sub accounts are actually contained on a distinct financial record, but the record is only a shell of information. The true financial activity is transferred to the group or lead account. This functionality does not accommodate different types or versions of credit card products. Although several authorization options exist, the restrictions are based on monthly spending limits rather than a true available credit. This is because outstanding balances are not monitored at the individual card level. Commercial cards also do not accommodate different types of cardholder relationships to the group. An employee card is either paid for by the employee or by the company. A family or household scenario requires a greater variation of communication and liability options. A family scenario also requires that an account can become independent of the group or other existing accounts can be added to the group.
If a child can qualify for a credit card individually, then the child can be the responsible party or a jointly liable party for the account. For example, a child can qualify for a credit card individually if the child is a college or university student. Even if a child can qualify for a credit card individually, an individual, such as a parent, may want to monitor the activity of the account to help the child manage the child's credit. Thus, there is a need for providing courtesy copies of account activity to an individual, such as a parent.
An individual's credit needs change over time because the financial ability of the individual, as well as the financial maturity of the individual change. For example, at one point, a child may not be able to qualify individually for a credit card and may need an individual, such as a parent to be the financially responsible party for the card. At another point, the child may be able to qualify individually for a credit card, but may benefit from some assistance or supervision from a parent. At yet another point, the child may be able to qualify individually for a credit card and to manage the account without assistance. Often times an individual uses different credit card accounts to meet the individual's different needs. However, it would be simpler if a single credit card account could adapt to meet the different credit needs of an individual by accommodating different types of cardholder relationships.
Some issuers manage distinct accounts at the lowest level then depend on outside data stores to integrate group data into the management of the accounts. Outside data stores are data query systems which are maintained outside the core processing system. They are often tied into operations centers for informational look up processing. The data stores are maintained by loading data from the core processing system. Issuers populate data stores and load “keys” onto account records to link accounts. These links allow customer service personnel and collectors to recognize individuals who hold multiple accounts. Data related to the various accounts can be displayed for use in manual service activity. This type of functionality is not integrated into automatic processing functions. In many cases, the operator would have to take further action to define the relationship the linked accounts have to one another. The card may or may not be held by the same individual or the accounts may not have the same jointly liable relationship to a second person. Thus, there is a need to integrate group processing into the automatic functions of a processing system to avoid the expense and issues of manual intervention.
Some issuers use these same off line data stores to process scoring engines. The scoring engines allow numeric values to be assigned to accounts which could allow the existence of other accounts held by the same individual to impact the processing of the first account. This process can be automatic but it assumes a generally static relationship. Typically, this type of functionality does not provide an easy audit trail to find the accounts which were included in the scoring activity. In addition, the processing activity remains at the account level rather than the group level. Credit lines, statements, and correspondence are not managed at the group level.
Some issuers attempt to manage some of these issues by distinguishing distinct balances on a single financial record. This processing is referred to as transaction processing. Transaction processing allows a sub record within the financial processing of an account. One balance can apply to one set of pricing controls, but not for distinct authorizations, ownership, or delinquency management. The payoff of these balances can be controlled, but the delinquency is the delinquency of the account as a whole. This functionality also does not allow management of distinct owners.
Some issuers address these challenges with off line or manual processes. For example, a jointly held account for a college age child may carry the child's mailing address and both the child and the parent's name. However, if the account becomes delinquent, off line files are used to find the parent's address and manual collection efforts are made toward the parent. In some cases, this might be the first notice to the parent of the delinquent state of the account.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a method for linking one or more accounts together to form a group to support integrated group level processing while maintaining individual processing to the accounts. Preferably, the accounts of the group can span multiple products and the relationship of each account to the group is flexible and independent of the other accounts in the group.